VoiceXML Forum Celebrates its 10-year Anniversary by Announcing Addition of New Board Members and Strategic Partnership with Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS)

NEW YORK, NY. August 24, 2009 –Today at SpeechTEK, the VoiceXML Forum, a global industry organization focused on accelerating the adoption of VoiceXML, speech recognition and related technologies and standards, announced that Avaya and Convergys Corporation have joined as Sponsor Members of the VoiceXML Forum and have been named to its Board of Directors. Avaya and Convergys join other Sponsor Members Cisco, Genesys, Holly Connects, Loquendo, Nuance, Verizon and West Corporation on the Board of Directors in providing strategic direction and leadership to the Forum.

“We are pleased to welcome Avaya and Convergys to the Board of Directors,” said Rob Marchand, Chair of the VoiceXML Forum. “Forum members will benefit from the insights, experience and industry thought leadership these two leading companies bring to the table. Having Avaya and Convergys join our Board is a great way to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Additionally, active participation by these companies will provide them with a wide range of valuable market leadership, educational, and promotional benefits and opportunities,” Marchand added.

VoiceXML Forum and AVIOS Announce Collaboration

In addition to welcoming new Sponsor Members Avaya and Convergys, the VoiceXML Forum also announced that it is broadening its scope of activities and opportunities for member involvement.

Today, the VoiceXML Forum is announcing a collaborative initiative with the Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS), a non-profit foundation dedicated to education about the practical applications of advanced speech technology. Working together, the VoiceXML Forum and AVIOS will pursue a range of educational and marketing activities to promote speech technology, applications, services, and related standards. More details on specific initiatives under this partnership will be announced over the next few months.

“AVIOS has played an integral role in growing the speech industry and providing excellent educational opportunities for speech practitioners. We look forward to working with them on educational and other initiatives,” said VoiceXML Forum Chairman Rob Marchand.

“We are delighted to be working with the VoiceXML Forum on industry growth and educational initiatives,” said Bill Scholz, President of AVIOS. “Our two organizations have complementary goals, and this exciting industry development will allow us to leverage the strengths of both entities for the good of the industry.”

VoiceXML Forum Celebrates its 10-Year Anniversary, as the IVR Industry crosses the inflection point in standards-based VoiceXML port shipment

This year, the VoiceXML Forum is also celebrating its 10 year anniversary. “The Forum has long been on the forefront of technology advancement in the speech and IVR industries. Ten years ago this month, the Forum initiated the revolution of web-based speech and cloud-based telephony services with the publication of the first draft of VoiceXML standards. Since then, VoiceXML has become a globally-accepted standard through collaboration with the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and broad industry adoption,” said Ken Rehor VoiceXML Forum Board Member, co founder and co-author of the VoiceXML standards.

“Opus Research estimates that businesses will spend roughly $2 billion on speech applications, platforms and services in 2009,” said Dan Miller, Opus Senior Analyst. “Web architectures and developer-friendly standards like VoiceXML have helped a new generation of developers re-discover the phone. None of this would be possible without the existence of a standard mark-up language for speech like VoiceXML and Call Control XML. That’s why we see spending growing to $3.25 billion by 2013, with lots of opportunity for both application developers and system integrators to make the phone more web-like in terms of the services that it can deliver.”

According to another senior industry analyst Dan Hong of Datamonitor, “2008 was the inflection point where VoiceXML ports shipped eclipsed that of traditional IVR. The question is no longer if an enterprise will make the move to VoiceXML, but when.”

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML and adjacent technologies. As the world’s leading VoiceXML advocate, the VoiceXML Forum works to certify VoiceXML platforms, to collaborate with standards organizations, and to create publications, including requirements, best practices, and use cases. The Forum’s core mission continues to make it easier to develop, deploy, and experience VoiceXML applications. Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. Current members include leading organizations from the speech, telecommunications, mobile and wireless, and information technology industries. For information, please visit http://www.voicexml.org.

About AVIOS

AVIOS is a non-profit speech technology professional society dedicated to informing and educating the speech community through information distribution and training opportunities and to highlighting real world applications of speech technology. For information, please visit http://www.avios.org.